Virtua Fighter 3: a glimpse of the golden years of SEGA - article
It is not the best title of the AM2 series, seen and considered that Virtua Fighter 5 Showdown deserves the crown hands down thanks to a fluid gameplay and close to perfection, which made us want a sequel for years, and it was not even the most innovative. The most innovative was undoubtedly the first of the series, having been able to shake the whole industry with its hardware to scream and a leap in the dark in a full 3D, albeit still rough. You could say, however, that the series has reached its peak with Virtua Fighter 2, when it involved a decidedly large number of people between arcades and porting on Saturn.
Sorry for the condition of my cabinet, but shouldn't every coin-op be a little run down by now? So why choose Virtua Fighter 3? Partly because it captures an epoch-making moment in which SEGA was still at the peak of its power, in a particularly evident way. This game coincided with the debut of the Model 3 hardware, unveiled in a spectacular show at the Tokyo AOU in the first quarter of 1996. It was one of those unique moments (and the 90s had many) in which we all wondered if the graphics could have become better, and where one could only admit that SEGA offered the most advanced graphics technologies. But it's a battleground that the company would have abandoned over time, and when Virtua Fighter 4 came out on Naomi 2, the battle seemed to have moved elsewhere.
Virtua Fighter 3 not only represents SEGA at its climax, but also captures one of the last moments of the sale games that seemed really important. It has always seemed appropriate that Virtua Fighter 3 has never really left the arcade; in fact, just like other games Model 3, has never received a port to home consoles decent, despite the version that the Dreamcast was a conversion ambitious. To play Virtua Fighter 3 in a dignified manner , you must obtain a card Model 3.
Virtua Fighter 3 is a special case in the series, having been designed to use four buttons And this explains why, in just a couple of years, I have found me to search conversions while I wandered the streets of Osaka in search of one of the few shops of the arcade cabinets of the city. As it often happens with the best shops of this category, it was well hidden and kept it almost a secret, hidden behind a handful of flights of stairs in a residential building. You realize you have found it when, on approaching, we begin to see the old cards CPS2 stacked on the stairs.
inside, along with a series of monitor Nanao without a shell, connected to the arcade bizarre, there is an activity that seems to have remained operational since the times of the golden era of SEGA, or even before. The walls in fact have yellowed from cigarette smoke, the cruisers are accompanied by manuals and diagrams of the circuitry, while behind the counter there are shelves heavy with hundreds of arcade boards. The time seems to have slowed down here, not that there is a row incredible for the turn, but the transaction lasts more than an hour since the owner of the store print new stickers on the cab and explains to a friend, who translates, how to connect the card to the enclosure.
The search of the boards for the cabinets can be as much fun as playing with their games, and these adventures that surround it are one of the reasons for not allestirei never cabin cruiser full of ROMS in emulation instead of original hardware into which you insert the various tabs. After the transaction at the store, my friend and I, we stopped to drink in a sake bar near Kyoto, where we are detained until the crowd in the room is sparse, so much to be alone with the manager of the bar, stopping to talk with him. The discussion soon moved to how we earn a living, and when we told them that we were working in the world of video games, with enthusiasm, talked to us about his love for the Virtua Figher 3 compared to all the other chapters in the series.
This is hardcore. It is an opinion with which I agree for similar reasons, or how it evolved the series before it became more hardcore with Virtua Fighter 4. The movesets are simple, more slender, and the balance badge in the series is more marked. Arenas, with floors staggered, emphasize poses and postures. Virtua Figher 3 is designed in a brilliant manner.
stands as the last example of the series fighting game powered by SEGA when they were still very mainstream. Shortly after the release of Virtua Figher 3, AM2 would have embarked in the Project Berkley, which is the game that would be released on the market with the trade name of Shenmue, a project crazy multi-millionaire who would have accelerated the exit of the company from the market of the hardware console.
I shall often think of this thing when I play my cab Virtua Fighter in my house, being able to hear the voices of the fans of the Model 3, while the lights of the cab of Astro City. Virtua Fighter 3 is the best game SEGA, is a game crash, with some defects, but is the SEGA game that I love, not only for its gameplay but also for what it means both to the golden age of the arcade for me. A love that is irrational, but that's how it works: you can't choose when and who or what you fall in love.
